Third parties will heal political divide

opinion@dailylobo.com

These days, it’s easy to say that the two major parties have lost touch with what they have traditionally stood for. Kennedy and Obama both define “Democrat” in radically different ways, just as Eisenhower and Romney define “Republican” in radically different ways. Essentially, both parties have existed unchallenged for too long that they have become caricatures of their former selves.

Many Democrats have drifted from fiscal conservatism with a social conscience to an overreaching fixation on social and environmental issues, while many Republicans have been hijacked by the evangelical right and have increasingly been bringing religion into politics.

Both of these giant shifts have alienated many diverse views within each party — such as the fiscally conservative, socially liberal Rockefeller Republicans and the pro-big business moderates and conservative Democrats. It is for this reason that the two-party system no longer satisfies America’s needs and must be replaced with a multipolar electoral system that acknowledges third parties as legitimate alternatives.

First, the reduction of American politics to the modern two-party system is a relatively recent phenomenon in the country’s history.

For the first three decades of the United States’ existence, there were at first no parties, and then only two parties but roughly three candidates to vote for per party per election. After the political-party system became well established between the election of 1828 and the Civil War, it was very common for presidential elections to have more than two parties. The two-party system didn’t begin to settle in until the 1840 election, with the Whig Party and Democratic Party taking the roles. Even then, the Whigs were defunct by the 1860 election, when the Republican Party emerged and codified the current two-party system. Also, for the century after the Civil War, third parties would periodically spring up and capture a limited array of states in the Electoral College.

And despite what some might call “dangerous interference” by third parties and multiple viable candidates, the republic still managed to elect presidents successfully and to peacefully transition from administration to administration. The election of 1824 and the Civil War were the only exceptions, the only problems occurring in the 179 years from the first election in 1789 until 1968, the last election in which a third party won votes in the Electoral College.

Also, the cries that opening up the political process to additional parties will only serve to give a platform to radical viewpoints are incorrect. The radicals already have their viewpoints entrenched within the two-party system, and they stamp out the moderates by refusing to allow them in. That’s right, I called both the Democrats and Republicans radical parties. As mentioned before, there are moderate elements within each party, but they never get very far because they are shouted down for holding views that cross party lines.

Bipartisanship, a lofty ideal to which both sides aspire, is increasingly rare in practice. That is why the addition of third parties would be useful: to reduce the stranglehold of radical politics by creating a spectrum of moderate parties with something for everyone.

Next, the relaxation of restrictions on third parties would cause an explosion of them in the short term, as various organizations would try to get their views out, win voters and run campaigns.

However, the fear that this would create a breakdown of government due to an excess of parties is also unfounded. While many third parties would exist, their existence would not assure that they would win congressional representation or electoral votes. While the Libertarians, Greens and Constitutionalists are examples of third parties that would be able to do well and have done well at the state level, there are many others such as the Socialist Workers, the America First Party and the Unity Party, to name a few, that would be subsumed within the main third parties or rendered defunct due to each having too limited an appeal for voters to gain electoral support.

Essentially, there is no good reason to persist in the current two-party hegemony other than to perpetuate a system steeped in special interests. American political thought cannot simply be reduced to either one choice or the other, and, to ensure a truly representative process, third parties are needed to reflect the full diversity of the American political spectrum.